Abstract

The instabilitydynamics of inviscid liquid jets issuing from elliptical orifices is studied, and effects of the surrounding gas and the liquid surface tension on the stability behavior are investigated. A dispersion relation for the zeroth azimuthal (axisymmetric) instability mode is derived. Consistency of the analysis is confirmed by demonstrating that these equations reduce to the well-known dispersion equations for the limiting cases of round and planar jets. It is shown that the effect of the ellipticity is to increase the growth rate over a large range of wavenumbers in comparison to those of a circular jet. For higher Weber numbers, at which capillary forces have a stabilizing effect, the growth rate decreases with increasing ellipticity. Similar to circular and planar jets, increasing the density ratio between gas and liquid increases the growth of disturbances significantly. These theoretical investigations are complemented by experiments to validate the local linear stability results. Comparisons of predicted growth rates with measurements over a range of jet ellipticities confirm that the theoretical model provides a quantitatively accurate description of the instabilitydynamics in the Rayleigh and first wind-induced regimes.